by Tonya Kappes
“Did she confess?” Sue Ann referred to Mary Elizabeth.
“No. I’m sure she didn’t push him off the rock.” I had the need to defend my adoptive mom even if I wasn’t sure what happened. I did know that she’d never, ever murder someone. “But I’m going to go up to the rock and look for his equipment while Agnes checks out some things around here.”
Sue Ann quickly nodded in agreement.
“Please don’t touch his body until Agnes looks at him and we carry him out.” I knew that would be met with a gush of tears.
“I still loved him.” She brushed her hand across her cheek. “We were together for a long time.”
“I know.” I pinched my lips together and left her alone. The others were off doing exactly what they’d planned to do, and now it was my turn to climb the rock.
With each step, I tried to see through the eyes of Mary Elizabeth. What I thought was beautiful was a sight for sore eyes in her mind, so it was difficult to see through the beauty of nature. The climb was steep but not so much so that Mary Elizabeth would have a hard time climbing to the top to go tinkle.
Once at the top, I looked both ways. The sun was bright and almost blinding. Had Mason accidentally walked off the rock, not seeing the edge in the glare of the sunlight? He wasn’t wearing sunglasses, and I wasn’t either. I had to shield my eyes to get a good look.
To the right was where it appeared in a lower area. Carefully, I walked to the edge of the rock, noticing there wasn’t a slick spot or a wet spot from the rain. This knocked out my theory that he’d slipped and fallen. The rock was dry as a bone. The water was crystal clear, as far as the eye could see. The view was spectacular, and I wondered if this was the last thing Mason had seen.
“Abby!” I yelled down when I peeked over the side. My stomach felt like I was on a big roller coaster and the first huge hill was approaching. The anticipation of the thought of Mason falling off here curled in my stomach. It was a long way down. The impact of hitting the water must’ve been what actually stopped his heart after he’d either fallen or someone killed him.
There weren’t any uneven spots or gravel where I stood.
“What?” I heard Abby holler back without me looking down. I just couldn’t look down.
“Am I standing about the spot where Mason landed in the water?” I asked because I wanted to make sure there was nothing there for him to have slipped on.
“Yes!” she answered.
“Can you also read to me the journal entry where we left off? And yell it out.” I took a big step back and away from the edge, making me breathe a little easier.
“‘Along the ridge out of the clift.’”
I knew the clift she was referring to was the overhanging rock I was standing on.
“‘There will appear a place that is higher than the other.’”
I looked around as she read Swift’s journal.
“‘Go in a low gap. Leave the high knob to the right.’”
“To the right.” I glanced around that way and saw a low spot.
“‘Go down, and you will see a hanging rock and a rock that seems to have fallen from the other. Go in betwixt them, and you are very near the spot. You will find the opening of the mine.’”
“That’s all for now!” Our voices echoed back as we’d been speaking. “Go to the low spot.” I told myself the high points I’d gotten out of the text Abby had said to make sure I got the main markers Swift had stated. “Hanging rock and another rock.”
I walked down into the low spot and looked for any sign of Mason’s gear. It had to be here somewhere. I shifted my gaze up and saw the exact rock from Swift’s journal. The rock was just a few yards away, but the brush was so thick, it took more time than I had anticipated.
The chiggers were biting every naked piece of skin on me they could find. I’d smack the spot where I felt them gnaw into me, but it was already too late. The nasty bugs had already gotten me, and little bumps showed it.
“I should’ve put that bug spray on my arms.” I regretted not listening to Mary Elizabeth now. I smacked away a few more of the critters on my way down the gap, heading to the hanging rock, as John Swift put it. “A cave,” I gasped when I got to the underhang. “Is this where you met the bear?” I asked out loud as if someone was going to answer me.
“It might be.” The voice caused me to jump around.
“Dirk.” I put my hand up to my chest. “You scared me.”
“Sorry about that.” He grinned and looked around. “Where’s your friends?”
“They are with…” I stopped when I realized he didn’t know about Mason. “Dirk, Mason is…” I gulped and watched his eyes search my face.
“He’s in the cave looking for the treasure.” He laughed and pointed inside the opening. “What’s wrong?” The smile fell.
“Mason isn’t in the cave. He… um… fell off the cliff and into the water. And, um…” I blinked a few times to get it together. “He is dead, and my friends are with his body.”
“Dead?” He cried out. “No. You’re mistaken.” He ran his hand through his hair before he darted into the cave. “Mason! Hey, man, where are you? Yell back if you can hear me!”
“Dirk,” I called after him and looked into the dark abyss. “Dirk!”
There was no way I was going in there without some sort of light, and I knew I didn’t have a flashlight on me.
“Mason!” The echo of Dirk’s voice bounced off the walls of the cave. Chills traveled up my body at the sound of his desperate cry. “Come on, man, answer me!”
“Dirk!” I’d put my hands up around my mouth as a megaphone. “Dirk! Please come back and see for yourself.”
The silence was deafening. The darkness was frightening. I took a step out of the cave and looked up at the sunshine trickling through the leaves. I jerked my head toward the cave when I heard heavy footsteps approaching the mouth.
“No.” Dirk shook his head, his jaw clenched. “Can’t be.” His nostrils flared as his chest heaved up and down. “No way. He was so careful. No way.”
“Please just come with me. We need to get him out of the forest.” I pushed my hands in the pockets of my pants and waited for what I was telling him to process in his jumbled head. “We need to go before we lose sunlight.”
“Our stuff.” He walked over to a brushy area, where he uncovered their backpacks and a couple of other sacks. “I can’t leave it here.”
“I can help.” I walked over and let him decide what he needed me to carry, and soon we were on our way. “Did you know he left the cave?” I asked.
“No.” Dirk was walking behind me, following me to the others and Mason. “He was sure this was the cave. We’d been to this location so many times because it was one of the first places John Swift talked about in his journal. Really it’s a rookie move.”
I turned around when he didn’t continue. His eyes were hollow, and his face was flushed.
“Let’s stop for a second. Do you have any water in these?” I asked since I hadn’t planned on being gone for so long, so I didn’t bring any water with me.
“Yeah.” He blinked a few times and pointed to one of the bags he’d given me.
Without asking him any more questions, I decided to just unzip some of the openings of the bag until I found a bottle and handed it to him.
Five minutes went by until he finally screwed the lid back on the bottle and looked up at me.
“We’ve been here hundreds of times over the past five years. He’s always been so careful. This just doesn’t make sense.” He held the bottle out to me. “Do you want a drink?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m good. You need to drink it.”
He did. He finished it off and stuck it in his backpack.
“You said he was on a cliff?” Dirk asked with disbelief in his tone.
“It was the rock that overlooks the mouth of the stream.” I didn’t recall John Swift’s actual wording from the journal. “It was in the journal.”
> “Yeah. I know the rock. But there was no reason for him to go there.” Dirk stood back up, signaling it was time for us to continue on our way. “He was exploring the cave like we’d done so many times before.”
“Where were you?” I asked.
“I, um…” There was an uncomfortable pause. “I…”
I turned around, suspicious of his behavior. His face was flushed, and sweat dripped down his face.
“Are you okay?” I asked, stopping us.
“Fine.” He ran the sleeve of his shirt across his face. “I think I just need to get back to camp.”
“Do you think you can help us with Mason?” I asked. “It’s just a few more feet that way.”
“Of course.” He took a few steps, making me proceed.
I figured it best not to say anything else so he could preserve his energy for our hike back to the campsite. The last thing the Laundry Club gals and I needed was another body to try to carry.
“There you are,” Mary Elizabeth greeted me after Dirk and I had climbed down the rock to the opening of the lake. “We were starting to worry.” Her eyes shifted to Dirk. “He doesn’t look so good.”
Dirk shoved past me and right over to Mason’s body. He stood there with a look of shock on his face. Sue Ann was still hovering over the corpse.
Agnes, Queenie, and Abby walked over to me and Mary Elizabeth.
“I think he’s in shock. We need to hurry back,” I told the group. “Did you find anything?” I asked Agnes.
“No. You?” We started to walk over to Dirk and Sue Ann.
“There’s some unanswered questions I have, but Dirk is in no shape to answer them.” I shrugged.
“We need to get back.” Agnes started to bark some orders.
“Who do you think you are? You can’t just tell us what to do. He was our friend.” Dirk’s tone was stiff.
“I’m Agnes Swift, an employee of the Normal Police Station, and I hereby deputize myself to look into the murder until the law can drive into camp.” All of her little, elderly body stood firm.
“Murder?” Dirk’s eyes popped open. “You think he was murdered?”
“I’m not sure, but we are treating it as such since the three of you”—she pointed to him, Sue Ann, and Mary Elizabeth—“did threaten that you’d like him dead.”
“Now wait a minute.” Sue Ann stood up. “You’ve lost your marbles.”
“Yep. The heat has fried your brain,” Mary Elizabeth chirped.
“Stop it!” Dirk screamed. “This is ridiculous. We need to get him back to camp before the sun starts to set and the trees cover the forest with darkness. Then we’ll be stuck out here.”
TWELVE
“What the hell?” Ritchie ran over to the tree line from the campfire when he noticed us walking out, carrying Mason’s body.
“In the tent,” I grunted from packing my share of the weight. “Let’s put him in there.”
“In this heat?” Sue Ann cried out from behind us.
“You want to put him in your camper? Then you can carry him to wherever it is you’re staying.” Mary Elizabeth had about enough. After Agnes took the pearls for evidence back at the water, Mary Elizabeth had been spitting nails under her breath ever since.
“Fine.” Sue Ann shook her head and nuzzled against Dirk’s chest.
“Wait a minute.” Ritchie was in a panic. He jumped around each of us as we walked to the tent. “What the hell happened?”
“Ritchie”—Agnes jerked around—“you say another curse word, and I’m gonna tell your grandmother. We attend the same Sunday school lesson.” She shook a finger at him. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes’m, but I’m just trying to figure out what happened here. I ain’t never had no one die and certainly never expected someone as trained as Mason Cavanaugh to have the curse laid upon him.” Ritchie continued to follow alongside of us, his eyes on Mason.
“It was no curse. Someone wants you to think it’s the curse.” Agnes made a lot of sense, and I wondered if she was right.
“Agnes, what if that’s it?” I couldn’t believe I’d not thought of that.
“We will talk about this once we get him in there,” she whispered. “Not around those three.” She nodded at Dirk, Ritchie, and Sue Ann, who were huddled around Mason’s body.
“What are you doing with them?” Dirk asked Sue Ann. “Did you push him?”
“What is it with you?” She shoved him. “I’ll push you.”
“Stop it, guys.” Ritchie grabbed Dirk’s shirt when Dirk started to go after Sue Ann. “This isn’t going to solve anything.”
“How are we going to get to the police?” Dirk asked the first real question that needed answering.
“I can’t get any signal with my CB,” Ritchie said. “I’ve been trying since I got back here last night.”
We got Mason’s body on the cot he’d put in there. All of us gathered around him and looked down. I closed my eyes and wished him to be alive when I opened them. My wish wasn’t granted.
“Should we say a little prayer?” I asked. “I think we need to do something.”
“Fine.” Mary Elizabeth always saw herself as a good Christian lady. “Everyone close your eyes.” She muttered a quick prayer.
“Why would you want to hook up your CB if you didn’t think you were going to use it?” Abby asked Ritchie after she must’ve taken the prayer’s silence to think about what he’d said.
“It’s always a good idea when you’re out here like this to have some sort of communication with the outside world.” He glared at Abby from the other side of Mason’s corpse. “I look forward to when they get the asphalt down so they can bring in electric.”
“Now what?” Sue Ann asked.
“We need to wait until Ritchie can get his CB up and running, or we can get out of here once all the water dries up.” Agnes stomped the ground. The mud splashed up under her hiking boot. “If we don’t get any more rain, this heat and humidity will help dry up the ground, hopefully let us get out of here.”
“You won’t be taking that big camper out of here. It’ll take a few more days of no rain to drive that out through the mud.” Ritchie didn’t bring me any hope. “I can get people out with my truck if it gets dry enough. I guess.” He looked back down at Mason. “I could put him in the bed of the truck.”
“That’s a plan.” Agnes wrung her hands. “No one leave this camp until I say so. That includes you.” She looked at Sue Ann.
“I can’t stay here. My crew is back at our camp, waiting on me. They will go out and look if I don’t get back.” Sue Ann made a valid point.
“Then I’ll talk to you first. But right now, I need to go shower.” Agnes looked at Ritchie. “There’s no more we can do for Mason. You and Dirk get the fire started and get to cookin’. We all need to get a little somethin’ in our stomachs.”
All the Laundry Club gals went back to the camper while the others did what Agnes told them.
“I’ve got this CB from Dottie.” I retrieved the wadded-up mess of cords from the storage underneath one of the couches.
“Oh my stars.” Agnes looked more scared of that than the idea of a killer among us. “That’s as old as the one my Graham had.”
“I don’t know how to use it, but I can tell you this: we need to figure it out.” When Abby held her hands out, I gave it to her.
“If we are taking handouts, I’ll take my pearls now.” Mary Elizabeth held her hand out to Agnes.
Abby looked up from trying to untangle the wires, and I glanced their way to see Agnes’s reaction.
“You will get those back after we find out what exactly happened to Mason.” Agnes carried her backpack with the pearls and whatever other evidence she had collected into the bathroom with her.
“Do you really think he was murdered?” Mary Elizabeth followed behind her.
“I think there are a lot of variables.” Agnes and Mary Elizabeth stood in the hallway. “I think there are three people who weren’t ver
y happy with him. I also think he was a professional hiker and climber who just so happened to fall off a cliff that I’m sure he’d been on millions of times?”
Mary Elizabeth came back into the family room, and so did Agnes. They sat down on the couch. Abby had gotten the CB free and walked back toward the bedroom, where the radio and stereo equipment was located, plugging the CB into any hole in which it would fit.
“There weren’t any cracks in the rock for him to trip. And I didn’t see any puddles of water or slippery areas.” I gave my observation and poured myself a cup of coffee now that it stopped brewing. “Here is what I know.” I opened the kitchen junk drawer, where I had stored a notebook I’d used for other murders I’d been involved in. I took out the notebook and pen.
I walked down the hallway and gave the notebook to Abby. She set the CB on the floor and joined us in the kitchen area.
“Not that I think you did it,” I stated directly at Mary Elizabeth and scratched my forearm where the chiggers had gotten me. “But I’d not be doing a good job of figuring out all the pieces unless I said this.”
Mary Elizabeth uneasily shifted positions on the couch, tucking her feet up under her and nestling her hands between her legs.
“Mary Elizabeth and Mason had a lot of unkind words between them. As we now know, her pearls were stolen.” I glanced over at Abby to make sure she was writing all this down and using the diagram we’d used before where we listed the victim then the suspects. Sort of like you’d see on one of those crime shows. “He had approached Mary Elizabeth about buying them. He offered a pretty penny, but she refused. He waited until we left to go look for Abby’s map’s treasure to break into my camper and steal them. Which he denied.”
I put that in there so we’d have it documented.
“We have Sue Ann Jaffarian. His ex-girlfriend of many years, who he claimed stole his maps after he’d done generations of hard work to get to this point. He also had her kicked out of the campsite and tried to get her thrown out of the other one, creating a lot of anger in her.” I paced back and forth as I dug deep into my memory for their exact conversation. “And she just so happened to show up after he fell?”